There's No Place In My Schedule To Fall In Love
by Capricornus152
Summary: AU!college fic. Mellie/Anthony. Mellie joins college and gets her groove on. Minor pairing of Topher/Victor.


**There's (No) Place In My Schedule To Fall In Love**

Mellie is one of those girls who actually doesn't mind the academic sides to college - she's worked hard for this, put in a lot of hours of sweat and tears and copious amounts of Starbucks coffee.

The unfortunate downside to this is that she's never really had a social life; that's not to say that she didn't have friends. Mellie's one of those girls who always manages to make friends easily - becomes their sweet, kind, ingenue Mellie and nothing more than a fantastic, reliable friend.

She moves into her dorms early on freshman orientation, gets the best bed and leaves herself the desk while lending her roommate the other, bigger bed and the biggest dresser. Mellie's not really one of those girls who needs a lot of clothes or has the painfully skinny frame to strut tighter clothes around the campus, so a huge dresser really isn't the biggest of her issues so to speak.

A few hours later, Mellie finishes unpacking and decides to grab a drink from one of the vending machines she'd spotted coming into the dorm halls. There's a lot of people there and Mellie smiles warmly at them all - although few of them smile back - and Mellie looks down into her can of Pepsi and makes her way back to her dorm.

There's another girl there, a few boxes at her feet and looking for all the world like a confused kid on the first day of school. Looking how Mellie feels. She's got Asian features and blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, skinny body clad in a tank top and shorts.

She turns and extends a hand nervously. "Hi. I'm Priya." The Australian lilt makes Mellie beam even more and she shakes Priya's hand.

"I'm Mellie."

----

Priya hails from Sydney, Mellie learns as they unpack her stuff from the cardboard boxes, and she's here on an art scholarship. She shyly shows Mellie some of her work over a bottle of tequila that Priya has in her bag and Mellie's impressed. The work's full of colour and life and birds and Mellie cheerily clinks glasses.

There's a party that night, some kegfest and Priya pulls on her smartest pair of heels, handing Mellie her gorgeous sandals. They're the same size. Mellie falls in love just a little bit as she slips on the sandals.

The party itself is pretty fun - Priya gets hit on more times in one night than Mellie has in her life (although Mellie keeps getting grinned at lasciviously at and feels a flush of heat around her already overheated cheeks) and in the end, they end up stumbling out of the frat house at 3am.

There's one skinny brunette, looking a bit out of her depth - thick Coke bottle glasses on and wearing a jumper too big for her - and they share a look before Priya swoops in to help the girl. Her name's Bennett, she shakily replies.

As nights go, ending it with her two new friends curled up on the couch, watching a Disney movie on their TV and falling asleep to the sounds of Dory singing isn't a bad way to end the first night of university life, Mellie belatedly muses.

---

Over the next few weeks, Mellie settles into a good routine - she does her work as quickly and as thoroughly as possible during the evenings, hangs out with Bennett during the lunches while Priya has her art classes and all three hit the keg parties that aren't populated entirely by rather desperate, drunken males.

Mellie's rather impressed how they're integrating - Bennett's roommate, a rambunctious party girl named Caroline joins them sometimes and she and Priya join the PETA group in the main building together.

One morning, a gloriously lazy Sunday, Mellie walks over the campus, sheltering from the November rain that splatters across the whole state and heads into the library. She's done the work for Professor Saunders and could be spending all day curled up in bed with a bowl of popcorn and a hungover Priya and the TiVo'd _America's Next Top Model_ for Priya to bitch at; but she's promised herself to read through next week's chapter so she can eradicate all guilt for next week.

She's the only one on this floor in the library - or so she thinks, until she rounds a corner and spies two guys working at a table. Or rather the same guy... but twice? Mellie blinks.

Oh, yeah. Twins.

They're both tall, with close-cropped dark hair and tanned skin underneath rain-splattered shirts. One of them has glasses on and is frowning at a history textbook while the other is absent-mindedly tapping out a song beat with a pencil and scribbling down notes.

Neither of them look really happy and in Mellie's heart of hearts, she has to help them out.

"You seem kinda dazed and confused." She says lightly and both of them look up simultaneously. It's kind of creepy.

"Sorta." It's the one with the glasses that's speaking, looking up at her with a look of utter hopefulness that makes Mellie melt. His eyes are brown behind his glasses and he flops back in his chair.

"What course you taking?" Mellie takes the remaining seat at their table and opens her own bag open.

"My bro here's taking English Lit 101 and I'm struggling with Ancient History. You?"

Mellie smiles, pulling her own book free as explanation. The man without glasses grins at her toothily and offers her his hand - which Mellie notes has well-worn callouses on his fingertips. "I'm Victor and my pessimistic brother's name is Anthony."

The brother named Anthony rolls his eyes and offers Mellie a loose grin as she pulls his textbook over, open at the start of a chapter about ancient Japanese culture.

"Aaah, _ohio gozaimasen._" Mellie quips. Victor smirks.

And Anthony's head thunks loudly onto the solid wood of the table.

----

Anthony's course is relatively easy - she's seen a few of the guys at the freshman parties slinking groggily out of that course (but strangely never noticed Anthony) and takes it to be a lot of _300_-style information mixed with essays and the odd bit of imagination.

She gets Priya and Bennett to help catch him up on his history classes - they're apparently suckers for brown puppy-dog eyes as well - in exchange for copious amounts of Starbucks drinks and movie rentals.

Victor's a different case - for one, he's a running back for the football team and has practice every Tuesday and Thursday evenings, meaning that his essays on Du Maurier and Blake and Cummings have to be rushed. Plus he's dating some guy in the neuroscience courses - a guy called Topher that Bennett knows really well, apparently - so he has to fulfill the odd duties of being a dutiful boyfriend.

They become an odd little group, a band of misfits and stereotypes mingling together - they spend lunchtimes together at the food court, listen to Caroline's boyfriend's band playing and pretty much do the frat house parties together. Topher and Victor are adorable together (everyone admits this openly) and one very drunken night, Mellie, Priya and Caroline plan their Big Fat Gay Wedding.

Mellie and Anthony start hanging out a lot more - even joining some dumb acting thing just to hang out and Mellie, despite herself, starts to fall for him. It's stupid and ridiculous but it still prevails, whispering it to Bennett and Priya.

Yeah, it's a good life as far as Mellie's concerned.

However, when she walks in on Priya and Anthony screwing on the sofa, her heart drops into her stomach for some unknown reason and she flees

----

"You know Priya, she's just... friendly." Caroline offers placatingly as they hunker down in the little cafe they'd found a few weeks after orientation and which had changed theme every few months in nationality. This month it was working a French-Arabic theme and the three of them were hunkered down on soft pillows and high, brightly coloured seats.

The three of them - Caroline, Mellie and Bennett - sip from teacups and Mellie somewhat darkly muses that Anthony and Priya are probably fucking right now. The really dark part of this is that it's not as if Anthony even cheated... she had no right to him, no claim. They hadn't even shared a kiss or any hint of a romantic relationship.

Mellie sips more fiercely from her orange tea. The pain still hurts though. "There's friendly and there's having sex on our couch with nothing but an unlocked door." The bitterness tastes sour in her mouth and she sees the surprise in both sets of eyes on her.

"I'm no expert on relationships..." Bennett offers sagely (and truthfully, it must be said), "but I think that you should just put some distance between the two of you. Then if Priya and Anthony start a relationship, then you can be cool and aloof. Like a praying mantis."

Caroline nods, a touch impressed. Bennett's a diamond for everything mind-related but a novice when it comes to anything with the heart. Mellie's willing to give anything a try - her only boyfriend pre-college, Rick, wasn't exactly a role model or a template for any relationship.

"Sure." Mellie clinks teacups with the other two and settles back, sanguine and contemplative.

----

Priya tries apologising for the next few days and it gives Mellie a vindictive little thrill to ignore her, shut the door in her face and do something they'd never done in their tenure in the dorms and lock it.

Mellie devotes herself to her studies and spends a couple of days holed up clearing her schedule for the next few weeks. It's all she can do to stay cool and detached.

She goes to a party with Caroline and Topher one night and spies Priya and Anthony across the floor, talking and looking at her. Mellie swallows back two more shots from the half-naked pledges circulating the entire house and hooks up with a vapid gentleman named Joel.

It's not like her at all - but maybe that's what her life needs at the moment, to escape a little bit from the sweet little shell of Mellie Costley and become someone who doesn't think or feel.

Victor and Topher help keep her occupied whenever Priya's out - they've achieved a level of communication whereby Mellie speaks to her civilly but cooly and Priya looks broken and miserable. There's only so many _24_ marathons a girl can stand and Topher's always curled up in Victor's possessive grip.

Then one night, at a Kappa Gamma kegfest, Mellie's getting hot and heavy with some random guy when he's thrown aside and she finds Anthony stood there, eyes dark and hands protective - and then he's kissing her, feverish and desperate...

Mellie slaps him.

"What the hell?" She stage-whispers, but it's loud enough over the thumping beats of Lady Gaga to be heard by Victor who neatly escorts Topher away. "You're with Priya!"

"No." He's fierce, more determined and serious than she's ever seen him. "We were drunk, you walked in and it was a mistake. I didn't... she's been beating herself up ever since! All she's been doing is blaming herself and feeling damn miserable 'bout what was a three-minute mistake." Anthony takes a deep breath.

"Forgive her. And understand that... I want you." His head bows, voice quiet now. "I'm sorry. I didn't know how you felt."

Then he's gone and Mellie's stumbling across the quad and crying out as she crashes in a heap in her room.

----

Things get easier. She hugs Priya one morning and Priya looks overjoyed, like someone invented a cure for all the world's diseases, not forgave a friend. She apologises profusely, explains the story and cooks dinner for them that night instead of ordering out.

Everything's almost resolved, every broken piece pretty much restored with a copious amount of humility and apology. Their grades improve. Thanksgiving and Christmas come and go but they promise to spend New Year's together at Bennett's family's place which is empty due to them being in Geneva for some reason.

It's fun and drunken and when there's the countdown, Anthony yanks Mellie into his arms and kisses her. It's a rebirth.

The bell rings in for 2010. They kiss again.

It's better than she planned.

_Fin._


End file.
